Paramount forcing scanned FASA Trek material off Net (Pen&Paper)

I just got a heads up from one of the other boards I keep an eye on. Paramount has been decided to crack down on scans of anything from the old FASA Star Trek RPGs. No word on why they are doing this now, after years of not caring. I understand it was always their right to demand this, it's just a bit odd that they've decided to re-enforce their rights with a vengence now, given how outdated and irrelevant the material is.

Fair warning to anyone hosting such material: get it off line.

Email I received below:

All,

I just wanted to let everyone know the following, for what it's worth...

Morena Shipyards has allowed me to meet literally hundreds of folks online. Inevitably, an "industry insider" joins our ranks. Most times, I never know. Other times, I've been fortunate enough to talk with them about our gaming hobby in general, and sometimes Star Trek specifically.

I've been informed that Paramount is actively looking for any sites that host scanned, copyrighted material for download and have already caused some file hosting sites to remove that material. I don't know what became/becomes of the person who uploaded the material, but it's not hard to fathom that there could be negative repercussions for that person.

Even more disturbingly, it appears that FASA Star Trek material is being targeted specifically. So, consider this fair warning that if you're hosting copyrighted material and aren't authorized to do so, you may want to reconsider.

I'm in that boat with you, as I know I've got some scanned magazine articles posted in the Files section. I'd like to think these would be "exempted", but what do I know, other than to err on the side of caution.

To this end, any links and any posts that point to a website that hosts such material will be deleted. I do not want to risk Morena Shipyards and what we have here.

I've been meaning to post this since Friday, which means that this was on my mind before a recent post (that will soon be deleted).

I heard back from the Admin at Morena. He can't say much w/o burning a source, but he seemed to indicate that the FASA material was "collateral damage" from a hunt for more infringing material. Basically they were going after something else Trek related and found the FASA stuff.

Apparently CBS and/or the new Paramount management isn't as lenient as their predecessors.

No one is quite sure. There is speculation that a new game is about to come out, but I don't think that likely.

From what I've been told, Paramount has been going on a C&D binge since sometime around May with anything Trek related it can get it's hands on. Scans of the published material were always copyright violations in the legal sense, but up till now they were semi-tolerated by the rights holders for just the reasons you gave above.

That is no longer the case. Paramount is exercising it's rights as IP holder on Trek and cracking down on anything that infringes it's property.

The open question now is whether or not they will branch out even further and start going after things like fanfic/fanfilms and independent artwork based on Trek.

This is entirely consistent with what I was told in a followup email that Paramount was C&D-ing other IP infringement and stumbled across someone "archiving" published FASA Trek material so they did the same to it and are looking for more.

And here is where they C&D-d both Phase II AND Norman Spinrad over "He Walked Among Us"

Not so far as I know. Most obviously affected would be fanfilms. According to people close to Phase II, they have a specific liason at CBS/Paramount who deals with the topic, and she is pretty good at letting them know what they can and cannot do (such as the prohibition on them selling their costumes, props, etc or openly soliciting donations with PayPal accounts, etc).

Phase II did have one run in with CBS/Paramount over the unproduced TOS script "He Walked Among Us", which they wanted to produce. The studio said "no". The situation was resolved amicably.

I'm not sure why Paramount would be overly concerned about FASA's work specifically, since the bulk of it was produced under license in an era when very little mainstream Trek was being produced by the studios. And once FASA lost the license after TNG came out, it became very difficult to get ahold of the RPG stuff. I doubt a lot of more recent fans even know who FASA was.

Update: The C&Ds are still going out. They still seem to be going only towards the actual printed material produced by FASA itself (that is, scans of the books, magazine articles, etc).

Some people over at Morena Shipyards were stupid enough to say in open thread that people should just start burning CDs of the stuff and swap that way and Paramount picked up on it.

As was said in the IP thread in Fan Productions, Paramount IS watching the internet on a regular basis. JJTrek finally making the big breakthrough to "mainstream" has made this a whole new ballgame in terms of what they are willing to put up with.

"Fair use" would entail a scan of one page to accompany a review of a whole resource.

As for CBS Legal sending C&Ds, this would be in support of all current licensees, showing that their $$$ will be routinely protected, as well as the rights of the original FASA creators who may not want their old material being bandied around for free. Tightening up is often cyclic, since it's very expensive to do it constantly, so they'll do the odd blitz instead.

I haven't heard anything yet on my end with the SSDB. If I get any hate mail from their assassin droids I will let y'all know. I guess they think "fair use" doesn't apply any more.

Click to expand...

Apparently, you don't understand the difference between piracy and "fair use" (unfortunately, it seems a large majority of the current generation of netizens don't understand it, so you're not in a minority).